Blueberry Cupcakes

Hiya

How hot has it been?! I haven't baked in a while as I can't be bare the heat of the kitchen. These were made BBH (Before the British Heatwave!)
How pretty is this colour people? As I loved my Lemon +  Blueberry cupcakes I fancied a complete Blueberry one so here are the pics of my Blueberry baking labour.

With these I used my usual cupcakes recipe and just chucked some blueberries in at the end. As I had some Bonne Maman Blueberry jam I decided to use this to flavour my buttercream. A thing to note was that I had to use a lot of the jam to get the Blueberry flavour I wanted, loads actually, but as the jam isn't really sweet it thankfully didn't make the buttercream too sweet. Next time I think shall use fresh Blueberries in the buttercream, as I think that would  be an easier more effective way of getting a lovely Blueberry flavour. 

Recipe for Blueberry Buttercream

100g Unsalted Butter (Lurpack)

200g Icing sugar

3 heaped tablespoon of Blueberry Jam

Method

Beat the butter with half the icing sugar till you get a  sandy consistency, then add the rest of the icing sugar along with the blueberry jam. Beat this all together till everything is incorporated.This is where I stop and check if I'm happy with the flavour and add more Blueberry jam if necessary. Normally I'm carefully to not over beat however I'd heard about beating your buttercream a lot to get a nice light fluffy buttercream. So hoping I wouldn't take it too far.. I gave it ago...and er...I  think I may have beat it too much. It was certainly lighter in consistency but I felt it made it way too soft really, which made piping trickier plus I felt it made it taste buttery which was a bit odd .

On to the flavour, I seriously loved these! The cupcake was lovely with juicy blueberries in and around. The buttercream was a lovely Blueberry flavour. Light consistency + lovely flavour...loved it.  

Stalk me on Bloglovin....if u like :)

Hey,
Yeah I'm a bit slow...but google reader has gone, if you would like to keep up with my baking world then you can follow me on bloglovin. The icon is on the right. According to bloglovin I have to post this in a post

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Boo..no yummy pics in this post...just admin stuff.

Chocolate & Cherry Brownies

I do solemnly swear that I shall make brownies more often! They are seriously awesome,          
Fudgy-tick
Seriously chocolatey -tick
Divine-tick

I have used another Fold In The Flour recipe,this time it's Susie's Cherry Chocolate Brownies.Now that makes three recipes of Susie's I have tried which I think means I'm officially her stalking her blog now :)  Its her own fault for having too many lovely recipes....so Susie only has herself to blame!

I decided on using cherries because recently I've been buying cherry scones which have been really lovely, so naturally that progressed to wanting to smother them a in chocolate brownie....as you do.

I was really happy with these, I was very careful not to over/under bake them. The result was delicious fudgey textured brownie mmm. The only thing I was annoyed about was I couldn't find the cherries Susie used so I opted for fresh cherries. They were perfectly fine and juicy but not as flavoursome as I bet the other cherries would have been. Although It was nice to bite in to the brownie and get a juicy cherry, I would have loved a stronger cherry flavour .

I shall be entering these in to Teatime Treats which is hosted this month by Lavendar &Lovage as the theme is fresh fruits. As I used fresh cherries I think they qualify.

Yummy Chocolate & Strawberry Cupcakes

Chocolate and Strawberries, two yummy things that I have wanted to join together in baking matrimony for a while now, so of course I have brought them together into a cupcake. My blog is certainly staying true to its name as I have been posting quite a lot of cupcakes recently...I really can't kick this habit......guess its a good thing I really don't want to!   

I'd been thinking about this combo for a while now...making something dark and chocolaty accompanied with a nice yummy strawberry buttercream. I decided to try Fold in the Flour's devils food cupcakes  as I wanted rich chocolatey cupcakes. The only changes I made to the recipe was I lessened the sugar, I went with 100g of golden caster and 100g of Demerara sugar. As with most of mudcake/DFcakes they always taste better the day after, once they have had time to really absorb all of the lovely ingredients.

The cupcake had a lovely,chocolaty, moist sponge due to the buttermilk. This was complimented byt the lovey,strong strawberry buttercream. Basically Delish!  My only slight criticism was that I would have loved a stronger chocolaty KICK, the cupcake had a lighter chocolate flavour then I would have liked. I imagine its due to the recipe only using cocoa powder and no melted chocolate. Apart from that it was gorgeous, loved it! 

 For the strawberry buttercream I just added a 2 teaspoons of strawberry jam to a regular buttercream recipe.  The pink with dark chocolate looked SO pretty! 

On another matter, does anyone know where I can get good paper cupcake cases I mainly use foil ones as they are reliable and won't come away from the cupcakes the next day...but would like some nice patterned paper ones. What have you guys found to be good+dependable?

Chocolate & Hazelnut Cupcakes

Hey Bakers,

From my blog you may have gleaned that I'm a little bit nutty about Chocolate +Hazelnut. By little I naturally mean obsessed with the flavour....I 'll try and chuck hazelnuts at anything that looks/smells/sounds like chocolate.
As my blog is called My Cupcake Habit, a chocolate hazelnut cupcake was inevitable. That is exactly what I have for you today, I kept the sponge normal and went nutty on the frosting. I decided to use a chocolate Ganache as I hadn't used that as a topping for my cupcakes before so I wanted to give that ago.I made these a while ago so bear with me as I try to remember what i did!

Recipe
200g of Milk Chocolate
150g of Double Cream
1 huge table spoon of Chocolate Hazelnut spread
Chopped Hazelnut to decorate

I heated the double cream, took  it of the heat to add the Chocolate & Hazelnut spread. I stirred till everything was combined and then let it cool. I piped with my Wilton 1M star nozzle when it had firmed up, I think I could have done better with my piping though.

This ganache gave me lots to think about, I shouldn't have used Milk Chocolate as it gave a very light chocolatey taste. Which was disappointing when I was after a smack around the taste buds of chocolatey Hazelnuttyness.
It was a silky, smooth chocolate ganache with a delicate Hazelnut taste.The lightness of the vital flavours was a bit annoying! Now I know what a ganache is like with cupcakes I  probably won't bother with it again as I think I could get a better stronger flavour with a chocolate buttercream .
All that written, it was nice it just didn't hit the Hazelnut spot for me.



                             

Lemon & Blueberry Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

I have a lemony delight for you guys today as last week I made some Lemon and Blueberry cupcakes which I paired with a Lemon cream cheese frosting (lush!). I love lemony bakes their just so yummy and refreshing, I'd seen them paired with blueberries and thought what an awesome combo.

To my usual cupcake recipe I added the zest of two un-waxed lemon plus a bit of the juice as well as a handful of blueberries. I thought it would be nice to try a lemon cream cheese frosting with this as I wanted a light topping for this lemony cupcake. I used the Pink Whisk's cream cheese frosting recipe, initially i was just going to add lemon zest to flavour it. However after tasting it felt that zest alone wasn't giving me the strong lemon flavour I wanted so my twin suggested  I add a tablespoon of lemon curd to it..... definitely a good call.

I was so happy with the way it all turned out. I took them to work and I got such amazing feedback I went home a very happy baker! It was a deliciously, lemony cupcake surrounded by juicy blueberries. The cream cheese frosting was a beautiful compliment, silky and refreshingly light. The lemon curd that was added last minute gave it a gorgeous lemony kick. Simply delicious.

A special thanks to my talented friend she has outdone herself with these photos let drooling comence  lol x

I'm entering these to Kick at the pantry Door's Feel Good Food challenge as June's feel good food is  Blueberries.

I'm also going to enter Simple and in Seasonal for the first time also as Blueberries are in season.

Profiteroles with Strawberry Cream

 

Hey, so one evening  a baking idea floated in to my head, strawberry cream hidden inside a chocolate topped profiterole. Sounded like a yummy idea which I had to give ago, hence this post.
Making these was unfortunately not as easy as its inception, frankly it was a pain in the butt. Choux pastry is really hard work, my poor little arms...... they hurt so much and I got a blister!

I used this recipe by Paul Hollywood, I can't stress how painfully exhausting this was on my arms!!! An unwanted workout and a half. Then the shape went all funny when I was piping and I forgot to press down the pointy bits, so some looked ridiculous when they came out. After all the hard work they weren't crispy because I didn't leave them to crisp up in the oven long enough. Lastly I discovered an angry little blister on my hand thanks to all the crazy mixing with the wooden spoon.

For those of you wondering about the strawberry filling I squashed some strawberries in to the double creamed. Whipped that up with some icing sugar,piped that through the bottom with an icing bag.This was yummy and refreshing with a lovely strawberry flavour. Dipped the profiteroles in melted chocolate and left that to set. The pastry was ok, chewy not the crispy pastry I wanted.

Managed to snap a couple of pics on my phone while it was still light out. Feeling lots of hostility towards Choux pastry at the minute because after all that pain and hard work, they weren't quite what I was after.

 

 

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